Hammers
Hammers are a form of overhead weapon found in Robot Wars. The first robot to use this weapon was Skarab from Series 1. Hammers did not generally have a great degree of success in Robot Wars; however, notable hammer-wielding competitors include Dutch Grand Finalist Bamm Bamm, War of Independence runner-up frenZy, and Extreme 2 New Blood Grand Finalist Thor. The House Robot Mr. Psycho also wielded a hammer. Definition *'Hammers' come in a range of forms, and are distinguished from axes in that they are usually blunt with the intention of causing internal damage, instead of puncturing through armour and damaging exposed wheels or tracks. Some teams add a blunt spike on the end of their hammers, like Thor and Hydra, in order to focus more of the energy into one point on the opposing robot. These types of hammers are usually referred to as spiked hammers. Advantages and Disadvantages Advantages *Hammers are one of the simplest and most widely-available weapons, with a robot only needing to have a common sledgehammer incorporated into the design at minimum. *Like other overhead weapons, they can be mounted alongside rear-hinged flipping arms and lifters. Hydra used this weapon combination to good effect in Series 6 and Extreme 2. *Due to the wide surface area of a hammer, a hammer is able to bend armour. This was demonstrated by JAR in its fight against Interstellar: MML, where JAR was able to buckle Interstellar's flipper; and frenZy in the War of Independence special of Series 4, where its hammer greatly buckled the armour of Detonator. *The weight a hammer takes up causes massive internal damage to opponents, causing opponents to become immobilised. This was best shown in Thor's battle against Chip, where only one hit from the hammer immobilised Chip. *Hammers often have a long reach compared to other overhead weapons, which allows hammer users to strike opponents with less fear of being attacked themselves. This was best demonstrated during Thor's New Blood Championship campaign in Extreme 2, where the hammer was able to attack robots like Cedric Slammer from a safe distance that its opponents could not retaliate from. *As with bladed and spiked axes, hammers can double as an effective self-righting mechanism, depending on the power, design and leverage of the weapon and its mechanism. So far, frenZy is the only hammer-wielding robot to have demonstrated this capability in any Robot Wars competition. Disadvantages *It takes a large amount of force in order for hammers to cause damage to opponents. Only Mr. Psycho truly utilised his hammer as a destructive weapon, using it to bend competitors' chassis out of shape and knock pieces of armour and internal components loose. However, as a House Robot, Mr. Psycho was seven times over the Heavyweight weight limit. :*Sometimes, the force from a hammer can damage the robot internally. This happened most notably during JAR's battle with The Cat, as when JAR fired its hammer, it came down with such force that it became immobilised *Hammers do not cause a great deal of visible damage, making it difficult for hammer-wielding competitor robots to win Judges' decisions. Notable exceptions include the spiked hammer of Thor and the 'meat tenderiser' of frenZy, both of which proved to be capable of causing substantial visual damage to Judge Shred 2½ and Detonator respectively. *The large weight a hammer takes up often results in competitors having thin armour. This was best shown by Thor and JAR, where Thor had thin armour to compensate for the large weapon, and JAR had no top armour at all as a result of its heavy hammer. *Like other overhead weapons, hammers have a very narrow attack range and are usually only able to attack robots directly in front of the wielder. While the Series 7 version of Thor circumvented this issue by being able to strike from both sides, the Series 6/Extreme 2 version suffered this problem greatly; often missing many hits throughout its New Blood Championship run and therefore becoming easily overpowered by Storm 2 in the latter. List of Robots with Hammers Robots are listed alphabetically. Robots which are not heavyweight entries are listed with a green background. House Robots are listed with a yellow background. Category:Weapon Types Category:Robots with Hammers